The Cooler Master HAF 500 is an excellent choice for performance-oriented builds and especially for those with power-hungry GPUs. Stock cooling is very good, and expansion is above average with support for two 360mm or 280mm radiators.
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Now don’t get me wrong they have made some updates. First this case supports much more cooling, so you have support for 360mm radiators on both the front and top of the case. All of the fans connect to a hub that also controls the ARGB lighting, and that hub is a controller if your motherboard does not have a 3-pin ARGB connection or don’t want to use your motherboard’s RGB software.
The Cooler Master HAF 500 is an excellent choice for performance-oriented builds and especially for those with power-hungry GPUs. Stock cooling is very good, and expansion is above average with support for two 360mm or 280mm radiators.
Performance-wise, the HAF 500 does well in our performance charts. The case's included fans are quiet, and at low fan speeds it delivers strong cooling performance. That said, we expected better from a HAF series case. Those front 200mm fans could deliver much more airflow than they currently do, and that has turned what could have been a great case into something that we believe shouldn't had HAF series branding. The HAF 500 looks like a "High Air Flow" case, but some questionable design decisions have left us to conclude that it isn't. That makes us sad.